The Scrap Heap
by Mercedes Watson
Summary: A collection of short, sometimes VERY short, stories and ficlets featuring various genres and focused on Tony and Pepper.
1. Careful When You Walk In

Hi there! Some of you may know me from over in the X-Men fandom, but I've also recently expanded into writing Iron Man movie-based fic as well. I've been neglecting my account lately and decided to change that today.

This will be a collection of short stories and ficlets that I've done as part of journal prompts or the its_always_been community prompts over on LJ. Unless otherwise marked, all stories/chapters will be Tony/Pepper focused or focus on them individually and will be set in the movie universe. They will run the gamut of genres, ranging from very silly to very angsty and everywhere in between. I can't promise my usual quality or length, but they're something. Bite-sized fics are better than no fics at all, am I right?

To start with, this little fic was originally written for nani1986 over on LJ with the prompt of "careful when you walk in, I'm laying by the door".

* * *

><p>Pepper woke up two hours before she needed to, unable to fitfully sleep any longer. Last night had been, against her better judgment, the first night Tony had spent alone since the incident with Stane. If the new …eccentricities that she had seen develop since his return from Afghanistan were any sign of his mental state, then she was positive he was not ready to be left alone after such an emotionally traumatic incident.<p>

To pass the time, she did the weekend version of her yoga routine and made her self an actual breakfast rather than her usual breakfast of yogurt and an Ensure nutrition shake. She showered and dressed and just before she was about to head out the door, checked her phone for messages.

There was one from Tony, received at 2:39 am.

Pepper took a deep breath to slow her suddenly hammering heart. _Ok, easy Pepper. If he drank last night, you know there would be at least 15 messages from him and not just one. He probably just sent out something by accident while taking apart his new phone._

She opened the message and felt her heart sink.

_'Careful when you walk in I'm laying by the door.'_

Pepper made it to Tony's house in record time, stomach twisting in knots over what she might find inside. His tolerance for alcohol was probably lower than he realized and she knew he hadn't been dealing with whatever horrors he had experienced in Afghanistan and frankly, she just hated seeing him like this even when there wasn't any kind of emotional damage involved. Once at the front door she took a deep breath to steel her nerves and opened the door.

The door only opened part way before a loud metallic clang sounded, followed by a human-sounding groan.

"Didn't you get my text message?" Tony griped from the other side.

Pepper poked her head through what small space she had been able to open the door.

"Tony, what…?"

There was Tony, on the floor, in the Iron Man suit. His hair was mussed and there was a healthy amount of stubble along his jaw, but it looked to be more from sleeping where he lay than any consumption of alcohol.

"Still, uh, still working out some kinks in the suit."

"Oh my God, are you hurt? Open the door so I can get in." Pepper began pushing on the door, but with no luck.

"That's the problem, I can't move. Something malfunctioned in the suit last night and it turns out I can't lift nearly five hundred pounds of titanium-gold alloy by myself."

"Are you ok, can you breathe? Should I call an amb—"

"Pepper. Pepper!" Tony shouted over her growing hysteria. "I'm fine, I can breathe, I'm _fine_. I just can't move; some kind of catastrophic failure happened with the suit. I need you to go find Happy and tell him to bring the engine crane up here from the garage if he can and then find out where the hell Dummy and U got to."

"So you're ok?"

"Yes. I'm fine. Why, what did you think happened?"

Pepper's shoulders visibly dropped from the sigh she released. "Nothing. I just…" a curious thought struck her then, "why hasn't Jarvis helped you? Why didn't Jarvis _call me_to let me know you were stuck?"

Tony grimaced regretfully. "Yeah…his A.I may or may not have reached the point where he knows to be offended at some of the things I say to him."

It was at this moment that Pepper realized that the mornings of coming in to find a severely hung over Tony Stark who needed the "garbage" taken out had been traded for mornings where she was going to find her boss in complicated situations with robots and machinery.

She wasn't sure which one was better yet. Playboy Tony she had grown to understand over the years. This new Tony…

"I'll go get Happy."

* * *

><p>Let me know what you think! I'm dying to know since this is a relatively new fandom for me. :)<p>

M


	2. If Only In Her Dreams

Originally written for the Christmas prompt over in the LJ community It's Always Been.

* * *

><p>Pepper awoke to a cloudy gray sky and a gray ocean that seemed like it wanted to be angry and choppy, but was prematurely defeated at the thought of the gray day ahead to put any real heart into it. She stretched in bed while Jarvis told her that it was a nippy (by L.A. standards) 59 degrees out with a 60% chance of rain.<p>

Once out of bed, Pepper headed downstairs, past the Christmas tree and cheerfully decorated living room and into the kitchen. The house was so quiet and still, she could hear the espresso machine warming up the water that would need to be stream to brew her coffee. While waiting for that, she opened her laptop that had been sleeping on the kitchen counter and read the news.

"Any sign of him, Jarvis?"

"Unfortunately, no, Miss Potts."

Closing her eyes, Pepper sighed and then continued scrolling through her RSS feed marked 'news'.

"Would you like me to keep you updated should anything develop?"

"Yes, please."

It was the 34th day in a row he had asked her that question.

Once her coffee was ready, she made it up in a mug and then slipped on her coat and headed down to the water. A chilly, salty breeze blew in off the ocean as she sipped at her mug of coffee. It was unusually cold, even for this time of year. Then again, everything about today, and this last month, seemed unusual. Tony had dropped off the radar about a month ago, SHIELD was being unusually open and communicative about the utter lack of information they had on him and Stark Industries seemed to at least be treading water, if not making small gains, in his absence.

Nothing seemed right. Nothing at all.

Pepper looked into the depth of her mug and saw that it was empty. She wasn't usually the type of person to get so lost in her thoughts, but then again…

She sighed and looked back out over the gray, shifting ocean once more.

"Merry Christmas, Tony. Where ever you are."


	3. Duck Duck Goose

Originally written for "lithiumlaughter" over on LJ. The prompt she gave me was "no more duck duck goose at the bar".

* * *

><p>For a second, Tony wasn't sure why he was awake, but then his stomach roiled dangerously. He opened his eyes to locate a bathroom and instantly shut them again, groaning from the pain that seemed to suffuse from his eyes into the rest of his body. Oh God, what was wrong with him? Was he dying? No, he couldn't be dying because he had done that before in a cave in Afghanistan and it didn't feel like this. This just <em>felt<em>like he was dying.

Pepper would know what had happened.

"Pepper," he called out, cursing under his breath at how his voice seemed bounce around inside his head. "Pepper. I—I need to know if I'm dying or not."  
>It was now that he registered the feeling of plush carpet under this face and…chest? Why was he not wearing a shirt? Slowly, he cracked open his eyes to see cream colored carpet and the hem of royal blue curtains.<p>

_Guess my days of waking up on the floor hung over aren't behind me after all._Tony thought before putting his arms beneath him and levering himself up off the floor and into a sitting position. He groaned as the room spun and his head pounded for an agonizing thirty seconds before everything ramped down to a reasonable level.

Now that he was sitting up, Tony was able to get a better look at the room. Or, rather, what was left of it. Clothes were everywhere, the bed was a mess and there was a bra hanging from the chandelier. Along with—

"Is that a condom?" he spoke aloud to himself in disbelief. Taking a harder look at it, he saw that it had been used. "God, what in the hell did I drink last night?"

"Tony? Is that you?"

"Pepper?" Tony scrambled to stand up, doing his best to ignore the wave of nausea sudden movement caused. He was halfway to the door that connected the living room and bedroom of the suite when he realized that he was naked. "Uh, don't come in here—"

"Oh!"

Too late. Tony reached for the nearest thing to cover his nudity, which happened to be a royal blue throw pillow with golden tassels on each corner. "Pepper, look, I'm really sorry for the mess, I know you thought these days were behind you and to be honest, I did too but—"

Pepper hadn't moved from her post by the door, where he could only see her head peeking around the corner. Normally, she would have started organizing and cleaning things up for him, ignoring his nudity. Instead, she stood there, wearing sunglasses and looking about as bad as he felt.

"Pepper, what happened last night?"

Her face was a decidedly embarrassed shade of pink. "I—I'm not sure." Her eyes traveled to the chandelier. "Oh, so that's where it went."

Tony felt his eyes brows creep up on his forehead. "That's _yours_?" He looked back at the bra, then to Pepper, and then took in the room again. "Did—we didn't—"

"I don't know. I don't remember," Pepper looked down at the floor before mumbling, "but I highly doubt we both had such apparently rollicking good nights in the same suite with different people."

He felt the color drain from his face. Ever since his involuntary, extended camping trip in Afghanistan, he'd slowly been coming to the realization that Pepper was much more than just his PA. She was his dearest friend, his confidant and, more recently, the star of his sexual daydreams. Something real was developing between them and he was trying hard not to fall face first into whatever it was. And now they had seemingly had a night of wild, drunk sex together.

"I'm sorry." Tony started, ready to say whatever it took to make this right between them. "I want you to know that—"

"It's ok. Really. I'm sure we both did things last night that we regret." She cleared her throat and bravely looked him in the eye, slipping into her work persona. "Can you get me a robe from the bathroom? I found one of those Flip video cameras and want both of us to take a look at it."

Tony wanted nothing more than to tell her how much it was _not_a regret of his, except for that he hadn't been able to properly woo her before they went to bed together. Instead, he went and retrieved the two fluffy terry cloth robes from the master bathroom and put one on himself. He gave the other to Pepper and she put it on before coming around the corner finally and sitting on his bed. Once they were both settled on the bed, Pepper turned on the little video camera and pressed play.

"That's right, we're in Tokyo." Tony muttered to himself upon seeing the ritzy saki bar that they had taken some prospective business partners that they had been trying to woo into a partnership with Stark Industries.

"Okay, okay, okay," Tony heard his drunken self call from the tiny screen on the camera. "We're gonna play a drinking game here." There was a chorus of cheers from the table, indicating that they had all been drinking for a good while beforehand. "Now, you fine gentlemen may know it as Hankachi-Otoshi, but we don't have any handkerchiefs, so we're gonna play what we call in the States as 'Duck, Duck, Goose'." There was another chorus of cheers as the camera was jostled and passed to someone else. The next decipherable image showed Tony going around the table, touching the heads of each of their guests and proclaiming them a duck. The guests, in turn, each took a sip of their drink. When he reached Pepper, who was sipping on a new martini, Tony hollered 'GOOSE!'. Pepper shot up out of her chair, knocking it over and began to chug her martini while Tony chugged down his scotch. Pepper held up a victorious empty glass first to yet another round of cheers, including Tony's.

"Oh my God," Pepper groaned, putting her face into her hand.

"Oh my God is right." Tony repeated, beaming with pride. "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

Pepper shook her head, still covering her face. "This is why I have 150 notifications on my phone. No more Duck, Duck, Goose at the bar, ever."

* * *

><p>Hope you enjoyed it loves.<p>

M


End file.
